Manufacturing Techniques and Surface Engineering of Polymer Based Nanoparticles for Targeted Drug Delivery to Cancer
The evolution of polymer based nanoparticles as a drug delivery carrier via pharmaceutical nano/microencapsulation has greatly promoted the development of nano- and micro-medicine in the past few decades. Poly(lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) and chitosan, which are biodegradable and biocompatible polymers, have been approved by both the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and European Medicine Agency (EMA), making them ideal biomaterials that can be advanced from laboratory development to clinical oral and parental administrations. PLGA and chitosan encapsulated nanoparticles (NPs) have successfully been developed as new oral drug delivery systems with demonstrated high efficacy.
This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the fabrication of PLGA and chitosan particulate systems using nano/microencapsulation methods, the current progress and the future outlooks of the nanoparticulate drug delivery systems. Especially, we focus on the formulations and nano/micro-encapsulation techniques using top-down techniques. It also addresses how the different phases including the organic and aqueous ones in the emulsion system interact with each other and subsequently influence the properties of the drug delivery system. Besides, surface modification strategies which can effectively engineer intrinsic physicochemical properties are summarised. Finally, future perspectives and potential directions of PLGA and chitosan nano/microencapsulated drug systems are outlined.
1 School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia
2 Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University, Locked Bag 20000, Geelong, VIC 3220, Australia
3 Agricultural Product Processing Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences, Zhanjiang 524001, China
4 Pharmaceutical Engineering Laboratory, Biomedical Engineering Department, International University, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City 70000, Vietnam
† These authors contributed equally to this work.
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 24 October 2015 / Revised: 6 January 2016 / Accepted: 19 January 2016 / Published: 1 February 2016
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nanoparticles Assisted Drug Delivery)